


Green Gloves

by greygerbil



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Character shamefully reads in universe themself/their crush RPF fic, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:15:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21734383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: When Pickles introduces Nathan to the concept of fanfiction, it doesn't take Nathan long to find the sort of stories that describe what he'd like to do with their manager.
Relationships: Nathan Explosion/Charles Foster Offdensen
Comments: 2
Kudos: 58
Collections: Writing Rainbow Green





	Green Gloves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cricket_aria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/gifts).



> Title credit goes to The National.

“Dude, Nathan! You have to see this!”

Nathan, who had just gotten himself another few packets of chips in the kitchen, lowered them to look at where the rest of the band clustered around several laptops.

“What?” he asked, sitting down next to Pickles.

“We’re looking at porn. Of _us_.”

“So what? That’s like half the porn on any website.” Dethklok doubles banging porn stars playing groupies was like its own genre. He glanced at the screen. “Also, that’s just like, text.”

“It’s not the porn of us with girls. Well... some is with girls but the girls is you,” Toki said, lifting his head.

“I am the girl?” Nathan asked. “What?”

“No, the reader is. Well, most of the time, sometimes it’s a dude,” Pickles said with the air of someone who considered himself an expert. “It’s called, uhm, ‘readerfic’. It would be like... ‘You go into a room and then Pickles offers you a drink.’ And then they have sex, or like, do sappy stuff.”

“You know a lot about this,” Nathan muttered, staring at him.

“Eh, I got high last night and fell down a rabbit hole.” With a shrug, Pickles clicked on another link. “But that’s not the _real_ interesting stuff. I found these archives, right? Tens of thousands of stories about us banging _each other_.”

“I sleep all the time with Tokis!” Skwisgaar said, scandalised. “There’s so many stories?”

“What so bad about sleepings with me? Maybe I don’t want to sleeps with you either!” Toki shot back. “You think you too good for me because you plays the guitar faster?”

“Betters, you mean I play it betters,” Skwisgaar answered with a grin. “But, uh, faster too, yes.”

“Why is there so little stuff about me? _I’m_ the one being left out again!” Murderface interrupted, looking up.

“You wants there to be the gay stories about yous and us?” Skwisgaar asked, raising a brow at Murderface.

“No!” Murderface protested. “I’m just saying, it’s not fair.”

Nathan tuned him out, as he usually did when Murderface went on one of his self-confidence spirals, and turned to Pickles again. “Who do they put me with?”

“Little bit of everything, but mostly me,” Pickles said, turning the screen to him. “Guess you’re my boyfriend now.”

Nathan chucked a pack of chips at him, which Pickles dodged. It hit Murderface in the shoulder instead and brought about another loud complaint.

“Here, I clicked on your name,” Pickles said. “That way you can see all the stories you’re in.”

Nathan looked at the screen. There was a lot of him and Pickles, some with the others – even one with Murderface –, a couple with all of them together somehow. He was about to hand the laptop back to Pickles when his gaze caught on a story at the bottom of the page.

“Oh, uh, they also make me date Offdensen?”

“Do they? Oh yeah, I guess so,” Pickles said, glancing past his arm. “You get to have robot sex.”

“Does Offdensen have the sex?” Skiwsgaar asked doubtfully. “Makes me thinks he can’t even takes off the suit.”

“You have to fill out a spreadsheet what you wanna do first!” Murderface volunteered, to the laughter of the others.

“Man, people are fucking weird, aren’t they!” Nathan said, too loudly and quickly, pushing the laptop back at Pickles, but not before he hadn’t gleaned the website’s name with a quick look.

-

When back in his room, Nathan opened his own laptop and got to work.

There weren’t as many stories about Charles and him as there were about him and the other guys, which made sense. Their manager didn’t really put himself in the spotlight. However, considering nothing was bigger than Dethklok, there were fansites detailing every inch of their life and Charles was part of that. Nathan had also noticed that jackoffs from the law and finance sectors seemed to always hang on his ass at industry parties, so apparently him managing Dethklok well had brought him fame in boring suit circles. He didn’t fly completely under the radar and some people had taken notice. With a fan community as big as the one Dethklok had, even a small percentage of stories still worked out to a lot of stuff.

Nathan’s little _thing_ for Charles (which was the closest he would get to describing it even in his own head because everything else just sounded not brutal at all, though it certainly felt it) wasn’t new, but it was not like he could talk to anyone about it. He had no friends outside Dethklok, who also were not his friends, of course. Besides, he didn’t even _like_ men. Not like that. Or at least he used to think he didn’t. That stuff they had done in the locker room back in high school when he played football didn’t even count, that was just teenagers being teenagers, obviously. So it was all around kind of confusing.

On his search, Nathan discarded the ones labelled noncon, which he quickly understood to mean rape. He didn’t want to imagine Charles forcing him and he most definitely didn’t want to force Charles. It would have been much nicer if his manager could have just wordlessly understood what Nathan wanted and come into his room at night without making him talk about it at all, to have sex and then maybe stay around because Charles was not a super brutal guy, and regular people liked to cuddle after sex, right? Nathan would be okay with that (for Charles’ sake!).

Some of the stories were porn. Nathan read them attentively. But there weren’t a lot of _fan-fictions_ (which was what these stories were called) which were only porn with nothing else happening at all, not even talking or kissing or stuff around it. He ran out after a few days. So he _had_ to read the others. Not his fault the writers didn’t provide the good stuff.

A lot were too syrupy, but some weren’t bad. He found one thing a lot of people wrote was Charles playing with his hair, like he’d done when he was drunk out of his mind, which of course they couldn’t know. Nathan had told him off then because it was in front of the other guys, but fuck, he’d really wanted him to keep doing it.

People didn’t know the two of them personally, so the Nathan and Charles that met in the stories weren’t all that accurate, but with a bit of imagination Nathan could still fit it to his own life. Sometimes, he even looked at stories below a Mature rating, too, if he liked the author.

He also found the forums about them. People shared interviews Charles had given – _Business Insider_ , the _Financial Times_ – in hopes of writing his character better, since many said it was very difficult with how little info there was out about him. Probably very few of them guessed that he had fought and beaten an armed assassin bare-handed. Nathan was still not entirely sure that Skwisgaar and Toki hadn’t been hallucinating that part (neither were they), but he would have paid a lot of money to watch Charles prove he could hold his own in a fight. It would have been insanely hot, and being unsure whether he could hide that thought was why Nathan had never asked.

One Friday evening, he found an “Alternative Universe” story. It played in the vague medieval times of many of their music videos. Nathan was a conqueror lord and Charles a noble scribe who he had taken prisoner. They had a forbidden relationship.

Nathan vaguely remembered sleeping and eating sometimes, and staring at the computer while a very drunk Pickles gave him an hour-long lecture about cookies from the doorway, but he only _really_ looked up from _The Dragon Knight’s Boon_ when, after a knock, Charles stepped into his room, sadly not dressed in robes that allowed for easy access as they banged behind the haystack in the stables.

“Nathan.”

He quickly slapped the laptop shut.

“What?” he asked, as roughly as he could, very consciously reminding himself that this Charles was not going to crawl into his bed later tonight when all the servants were asleep.

“I just wanted to check that you are okay. You haven’t been out of your room in a couple of days.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Uh. Just – working. Watching a TV show. Reading. Something.”

“Alright, well.” Charles looked mildly interested, but mercifully did not ask anything else. “The production team needs you for some reshoots of, ah, _Black Fire Upon Us_. Would that be something you can do today?”

Nathan was about to complain that he had already been on set for that, but stopped himself. _Black Fire Upon Us_ was another one of these dragons-and-Vikings type of videos. The nerds on the Nathan/Charles forums were always taking apart any pictures and clips of them together and making up stories based around that. Surely if Charles showed up in a video, Nathan would get more fic like the one from the Alternate Universe? That was smart thinking, right? It was like sowing a seed and then taking the fruit or some shit. He wished he could have done the same for their regular appearances, but he couldn’t think of anything special to do with Charles in front of an audience of regular douchebags that wouldn’t tip Charles off something was going on.

“Yeah, sounds good. Hey, you’ve, uh... you haven’t been in any of our videos, have you?”

Charles looked at him for a moment, frowning slightly, then seemed to give up on understanding Nathan’s train of thought.

“No. But I am neither a member of the band nor an actor or musician, so why should I have been?”

“I don’t know, I just think it’d be, you know, cool. Since you’ve been our manager since forever. It doesn’t have to be a big part. Just an, uh, easter egg.”

It didn’t look like Charles really understood the purpose, but it was evidently not a big enough issue that he would fight about it. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I can come to the set if you want me to, sure.”

“Great! Let’s go.”

Nathan barrelled past him so quickly he almost knocked Charles over.

-

The outfit Nathan chose for Charles was a torn and scorched druid’s robe that hung half off one shoulder and exposed too much of a leg, both of which gave way to the idea that perhaps Toki and Skiwsgaar hadn’t been imagining things because what did a numbers guy have to be so cut for? The make-up department stole his glasses and tousled his hair. Someone had given him a broken sword to clutch. The director made up a scene on the spot of Charles seeing Nathan, throwing the sword away, and kneeling to accept him as his new god. It was probably going to turn out to be like five seconds in the actual video, but Nathan would admit that he had jerked off to it later that evening.

A week later the video was on the air and the forums were going up in very joyous flames. Several stories, both of the romantic and Explicit variety, sprang up around the scenario, the filming, and the idea-making process that had led to the scene. The latter were a lot more exciting than Charles playing along so Nathan wouldn’t complain about reshoots, but Nathan had no problem with that whatsoever. There was also a lot of fic about druid Charles worshipping Nathan in adult content ways, too.

For the first few days after the explosion, Nathan had a lot of fun with it. There was lots of new stuff for him to read. However, as the days dragged on, he found that his amusement somehow became hollow. The more fan-fictions he read in which Charles professed his love to him, or very willingly remained on his knees to suck his cock, the more obvious it was that none of this shit actually got the real Charles any closer to his bed.

But that didn’t mean he could just stop following his favourite stories now – some of them weren’t finished yet! And as the days went on he became less and less careful about where he was doing it, too. The others didn’t really like reading all that much and seemed to have long forgotten about Pickles’ discovery – including Pickles himself. They never looked much at each other’s computers unasked because it was safe to say that they could all live without knowing about each other’s fetishes in even greater detail than they already did. He was mostly safe.

So Nathan might have forgotten his laptop in the empty recording room, open, and that was totally on him, but it _did_ have a big Nathan Explosion sticker on it, which meant it was easy to identify. In theory, Charles really shouldn’t have been leaning over it when Nathan came back from his room with the notes for the next song in his hand. Charles seemed to know this, too, because when he spotted Nathan from the corner of his eyes, he sprang back with more life in him than Nathan had seen from him in like ever.

Nathan was pretty damn sure that what was open right now was a very explicit chapter from his reread of _The Dragon Knight’s Boon_ where he and Charles ended up fucking over the merlons of Nathan’s castle. Charles’ wide-eyed expression, which was quickly schooled into a more unassuming look made him fear he was right.

“That’s my laptop,” Nathan said, lamely.

“Yes, I, ah, I had no – intention of invading your privacy. Excuse me. It just... caught my eye.”

“Yeah.”

They looked at each other in what was the must brutally awkward silence Nathan had ever experienced.

“I did wonder about you asking me to be in that video,” Charles said, finally.

Of course he’d already made the connection. Nathan figured it wasn’t too difficult. It was still really fucking embarrassing, though.

Charles pulled at his tie. “Well, it’s – natural to have, ah, fantasies. I know they don’t necessarily have to have anything to do with real life,” he added.

Nathan nodded his head vigorously. He should be glad that Charles hadn’t walked in on an open tab of a story that wasn’t about knights, but about doing it backstage or complicated (but strangely compelling) plots about record label betrayal and romance, which he also read a lot. At least he could take the out Charles was giving him here.

“I mean, I know this is kind of gay,” Nathan admitted hesitantly.

“That’s – fine, Nathan. There’s nothing wrong with that. And I am, in fact, gay, after all.”

This threw Nathan for a way, way bigger loop than it probably should have after a good couple months of reading porn specifically about the two of them.

“You are? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“You never asked and there was no reason to,” Charles said simply.

Nathan opened his mouth and closed it. He wasn’t gay, but he wasn’t really sure he was straight anymore, either. He supposed around the tenth time you jerked off thinking about a dude in as much detail as he had, you couldn’t really claim you weren’t into men at all. Were Charles basically any other gay guy in the world, Nathan might have simply asked him out right here and there, just to try it out. He didn’t have to worry about getting rejected, he was Nathan goddamn Explosion, after all.

But Charles happened to be the one dude who had to clean up all his messes, figuratively and literally. Also, Nathan may or may not have threatened to kill him a few times – not in earnest, of course. He had also called him a robot pretty consistently since one of the band had come up with it. Charles had watched Nathan fail at even attempting to get his G.E.D. while he was some sort of weird human supercomputer in matters of finance and law, according to the articles the writers had posted on their forum. There was good reason to assume that Charles wasn’t into him.

“So, uhm, you... seeing... anyone?” he muttered, finally.

“No. I haven’t been with anyone in a few years. Dethklok keeps me quite busy.”

“Woah, that’s pretty long.” Nathan stared at him. “Not even, like, hookers? They have male hookers, right?”

Somehow, the idea that he had kept Charles preoccupied enough to keep him off other men wasn’t too bad, even if it was a little unfair towards Charles.

“They do, but I don’t really enjoy paying for sex.”

“Yeah, I get that, I guess.”

Not that Nathan was opposed, really, but he preferred groupies who came to him of their own accord, too. Felt better knowing someone wanted to sleep with you. He scratched the back of his head.

“I guess it really would be, uh, best for you to date one of us, huh?” He laughed stiffly. “Or a Klokateer. Yeah.”

“The Klokateers die a lot, often on my orders. That might be ethically difficult.”

Charles tugged at his tie again. Nathan noticed that he had pointedly not said anything about dating someone from Dethklok and felt his stomach twist in nervous anticipation.

“Right, but like, uh, if you went to have a drink with, uhm, me for example...”

“That would be inadvisable, since you are my boss, but... realistically, workplace relationships happen quite a bit, don’t they?” Charles answered, tone still very blank. No wonder the dude had gone to law school.

“Yeah. You have to be realistic!” Nathan said enthusiastically.

A brief smile twitched at the corner of Charles’ mouth.

“Do I have to wear the robe?”

“No,” Nathan growled, embarrassed, then stopped himself. “I mean – uh, maybe? At some point. It looked kinda good on you.”

“I, ah, might have pushed to be in a video before if I knew it would have that effect.” Charles glanced at the clock on the computer. “Perhaps I can meet you tonight at eight?”

Nathan swallowed the idea that Charles apparently had _hoped_ Nathan would come on to him and stopped himself from grinning like an idiot.

“Well, as you said, I’m your boss, so can’t I like, make you clean your schedule right now?”

Charles lowered his head and gave Nathan a look over the rim of his glasses. Somehow it was so much more intense than usual.

“... maybe this once,” he allowed.


End file.
